gray and dead there, with neither green leaf nor white bloom.
“I am sorrowful to bring you through them,” said Phadraig, the king,
for the priest was old and the way hard. “But over beyond the hill
is the great forest—and there by the blue lake the pulse of the sea
is—”
But the forest was a jungle with no path, and the lake was not there;
only a bog stretched from the gray wood to a cliff of gray rock, and
Phadraig could say no word but sat there on a crumbling stone and
covered his eyes with his hands.
“Now, O Phadraig, will you come back to the warm blood of your own
clans?” asked the priest. “For here is the end of the dream.”
But Phadraig, the lover, stood up and walked to the wall of gray rock
at the edge of the bog.
“Not yet—O holy father,” he said. “Once only I was to come for proof
in one lifetime, and here am I! Come you and look.”
He tore away from the rock wall the gray and green lichen and placed
his fingers into the carving made there for the star of the north,
and its circling seven, which makes both cross and wheel in the night
sky.
“See! I drilled them deep as the flint knife would burrow the stone,”
he said, “and the storm has beaten away the face of the rock until
only the traces are here. But Danaan took one finger of her white
hand and drew a circle as her bond, and it has eaten deep into the
rock as if carved with tools of iron this day. Father, what should
that tell to me?”
And the holy man looked in the face of Phadraig, the king, and made a
prayer against enchantments, and rang the sacred bell of church there
in the gray wood before he would speak.
“Since written bond it is, O Phadraig, rest your soul with the
thought that it was a bond with a forbear of yours a thousand summers
agone! You have only dreamed the dream that was born in your blood of
that bond. You have kept the tryst for your ancestors, and risked
your life and soul in the keeping. No more of duty for your race will
be required of you in this life—naught but to wear the crown and rule
in the ways of the clans.”
So Phadraig knelt there by the written bond of union, to the harmony
of the circling stars, and he touched the circle of Danaan while he
made his prayer, and then they went out again from the wilderness
to the sea, and the white birds flew silently ahead of them on the
sun-path to the home land of Erinn.
“Look not behind you,” said the priest, “but follow the birds and
pray for all lost souls.”
For well he knew what would come of the church bell, and the
Christian prayer in the gray wood. And come it did, for when he
looked back the ancient island of enchantment was no more to be seen.
And no living man has seen it to this day except its shadow every
seven years far across the gold haze of the sunset path, and then the
gray wood is glorified and young again—but there are those who can
still hear the music of Danaan across the water in dusks and dawns.
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And Roiseen of the Glen went to the great hall of Phadraig, the Ua
Dinan, and nursed his children there, and gave comfort to Yva of
Kilfernora, who was wife to him, and counseled her never to hedge in
a child of the Ua Dinan from the open life and the old faiths; for
in strange and dangerous ways they would cross the barriers, and it
was safest to let them range free till they made the circle and came
back to bide at the hearthstone and under the bell of the church.
The holy man of the cave of Saint Colman was given merit by the
bishop for saving the soul of Phadraig, the king, who was known to
have won a strange power through some holy source.
His hair whitened but his eyes were ever young, and his strength and
wisdom grew, and his children’s children could not keep pace with him
on the moors. He trained his eldest son to rule, and when the times
were safe, he gave up the crown and wore the monk’s robe of white,
and crossed over to Dun Aengus of the Isles of Arran. The singers of
three centuries sang the songs of Nihil, his father, and the poets
wrote of Phadraig, the king, as of a holy man by whom the white birds
were tamed. Also he loved the stars and learned wisdom of them in the
night, and in the blessed Isle of Arran he was always out under the
sky when the wind blew from the west—and the music he heard then made
him walk in beauty with the glad eyes of a lover who is beloved.
And when the Time came, he laid him down in the white robe and bade
all doors be open, and all windows, that the west wind come over him!
And the white birds came on the wind and circled the room and hovered
there. While the brother monks lit candles and chanted the words for
the dying, he smiled in content and whispered the music of the song
of Nihil—
She takes my hand at the sea marge,
She whispers low on the wind,
She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue
And leaves worn Life behind!
No pain was with him, and no sickness, but he went out on the wind as
the birds went, and the monks who knelt by him, waiting some vision
of his patron saint, heard him say at the last:
“Danaan, the star stands steady these thousand years and the circle
closes. I come back on the breath of the gods!”
There was much learned discussion over this saying of his. Some
thought he spoke of Daniel of the Hebrews, who was never a saint but
was once a strong prophet. Others thought it was David, the king, of
whom he spoke, for David was once a shepherd—and such were ever wise
in the ways of the stars of night.
As to the “breath of the gods”—they could by no means make out the
meaning of that, which would have been blasphemy had it been said
by anyone, high or low, and in their charity the monks united to
disbelieve their own ears and content their souls with the miracle of
the white birds—which was a beautiful miracle indeed—and, of course,
a holy one.
So Phadraig, the king, was buried in consecrated ground, and only two
souls had lived in his day to read the riddle of his life. One was
the Wise Woman of the Glen and the other a holy man of the cave of
Saint Colman in the hills.
But each had passed on, long years before, and made their choice
between heaven and Tir-nan-Ogue.
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[Illustration: THE ENCHANTING OF DOIRENN]
[Illustration: Love’s Story]
[Music]
THE ENCHANTING OF DOIRENN
Not lucky is it for a man when his own clan gives him low looks, and
Ruadan of Ardsolais saw how the wind blew in the rath of Fethna in
Meath when his kinsmen brought there a counting of cattle, and they
grudged that payment of cattle and grudged twice over the twelve
white cows, for the white cows were the darlings of the herd, and his
kinsmen were coveting them for their own fields. And to Fethna, who
was lord of the judgments in that place, they spoke.
“What is this debt to Cairell?” asked Donn, of his clan. “Far from
Deasmond is the dun of Cairell; far to drive cattle, and waste of
time coming.”
Fethna would have been a cloak for Ruadan had he dared, but justice
must have light of the sun.
“It is no debt, and I could wish you made me no asking,” he said. “It
is a fine, and it had to be paid when Cairell brought witness and
made oath.”
“Why not give to them the tale?” asked Ruadan, and laughed. “If
Cairell and his wife Luaine care so little to have songs of us going
round the fire, what is it to me? Luaine of the white hands can be
queen of cattle for all I am caring. That is the comfortable kind of
wife to have for old age, and she is a fair, sweet body.”
“It would serve you better,” said Donn, of his clan, “to take a wife
of your own, that your kinsmen could bring their women folk to your
dun, as is fitting. Neither monk’s robe nor wife will you take or
will you keep.”
“I am not yet brave enough in spirit to pledge my name for every
man’s child a woman may take fancy to bring; it takes a brave man for
that. Until I find the right woman it is cheaper to pay trespass in
cattle.”
“You talk heresy; for marriage is called sanctified.”
“So the priests are telling, but it takes more than their words to
prove it so. Make not your quarrel here, because there is no wife in
my dun, when all these coveted cattle are paid by me because there
was a wife in my camp in the forest—ill-luck on that night!”
His kinsmen stared darkly, feeling they were laughed at, but Fethna
spoke.
“It is the truth: the woman followed him, he makes no denial.”
“What good of it?” laughed Ruadan. “I left his dun and asked no
company. Every jester in Erinn would have a song of me if I took
flight from the same woman twice. And where would there be profit in
it to anyone?”
“There would be profit in that you would not lose the love of Niall,
the king,” said Fethna sorrowful, and Donn changed looks with the
others.
“True enough,” agreed Ruadan, “but if Niall was pleased to give me
love himself, why should he be in anger for the reason that his
uncle’s cousin’s daughter should have followed after to do the same?
How was I to know? Does a man waste time to ask about grandsires when
a lovely woman would creep under his cloak? Out on you for a lot of
cold-blooded fish! Niall Caille will show temper for a year perhaps,
and I’ll be keeping my distance till he has need of a spear.”
“Is the favor of a king so small a matter that you pick it up and put
it aside as you will?” asked Donn jealously. “Strange tales have come
to us of other heads with crowns and other friendships of yours.”
Ruadan looked at his hand on which a foreign ring shone—a ring of
deep gold and a red jewel in it.
“Rest you easy on that. There will be no cattle to pay there! I was
on the business of the king; and the jewel was given only to the
king’s messenger.”
“Ask of Niall another gille next time,” said Fethna, “for the last
one had tales to tell of Queen Ota and that ring of yours! Turgesius
of the Danes needs two eyes for her alone. Since kings and queens do
not come to me to set fines for loves, I can laugh at that, and leave
it to Niall. But the bards do be making songs of that and even the
maids are singing them in their chamber.”
Back of the arras there was a movement and a scuttling of feet; maids
were there listening because the drive of cattle had made talk.
Bevind, daughter of Fethna, was there, and held by the hand Doirenn,
of the deep voice, to listen.
“Do you have wonder that I give him my looks when queens have given
him love?” she asked, but the girl Doirenn looked her gloom and her
scorn.
“How is it that you give looks to him whom they call ‘God’s Dastard’
when your eyes have looked on goodness in Geroid who has no blemish?”
she asked. “This man has much blemish, and is not in shame because of
it.”
“You are as hard on him as the monks, for it was the monks that
put that name on him. It is heavy to carry, Doirenn. To put an ill
name to a boy and hope he walks the white path is much to hope for,
Doirenn.”
Doirenn looked at her, frowning.
“I have not seen his face, yet I am thinking ill of him,” she said.
“Geroid would have no light word of women and cattle such as this
man speaks. Give him no looks, Bevind, and no words. It is said that
monks learn holy ghostly things, and, if turned dastard to God, they
can use power for enchantments. If a queen, even a pagan queen,
looked love on him, and a king’s cousin followed him, what can it
mean but enchantings?”
Bevind gasped and rolled her eyes.
“I did hear old Aillve tell a tale of enchantment by love, and the
man was old as the world, yet looked young, and he snared maids and
took them to his rath where they were changed to white cats. His
forest was full of beautiful white cats, waiting for a brave and pure
youth to ride their way and make prayers there; and that would free
them, and nothing else would free them.”
“Geroid could be that one,” said Doirenn. “All his verses on the
tablets are against enchantments in these days. Here is one—
_Against incantations of false prophets,
Against craft of idolatry, against spells
Of women, and smiths, and druids, I bind
Myself to the strong strength._
The prayer of a saint is that prayer, Bevind, and with
it he could ride safe to free all enchanted souls.”
“But would he?” asked Bevind. “He is my kinsman more than yours, and
the safe side of a good wall was ever the choice of Geroid when the
play was getting rough. My brothers are wild to fight out the Danes
when the time comes, but Geroid casts no spear for that practice.”
Doirenn sulked and frowned.
“Your brothers have not souls of religion,” she said, “they have
jealous hearts because of the high words of Geroid.”
“They have jealous hearts because of your own beauteous eyes, and
because not one of them would shut himself away with the monks,
and feed a maid like yourself on letters and on the prayers of the
old-time saints, and that is what Geroid is doing to you.”
“The tongue of you is bitter from some poison herb you have chewed
on,” declared Doirenn, “you have no good word for the godly, but many
good words for that swaggering lover of queens and other men’s wives.
The more shame to you!”
Bevind laughed again. “Alanna,” she said, “he has no love, else he
would have kept Luaine who followed his road. He would be fighting
for her and not paying cattle for her—no—Ruadan of Ardsolais has not
yet found Love, he has only found many fond women. Achone! That I was
promised in troth before I was seeing him, for his kinsmen are saying
it is a wife he should have, far away there, back of beyond where his
dun is in the mountains.”
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
But Doirenn cared not where he lived, nor when he wived. She carried
the last tablet of Geroid out through the arbor where she could read
over again and again the written words of the lad who was dear and
was far. She unbraided the red gold of her hair, and let it fall
about her as a shimmering curtain. She had days in that sixteenth
year of hers when the veil of a nun would have seemed to her a sweet
thing to wear in sanctuary, but the cutting of that golden shower was
a thing to shrink from; and the thought of Geroid was another reason!
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
It was there in the arbor Ruadan saw her, while his kinsmen fed and
Fethna did a host’s duty.
At first he could see little but the glory of her hair and the bare
feet under the striped skirt of white and brown. He was above her
on the wall, and stood waiting some movement that her face might be
uncovered.
Fethna found him thus, for she had not moved and he had watched her
long.
“Who is that?” he asked, “or do I dream of magical gold in the shape
of a maid?”
“It is Doirenn, daughter of no man now, for Marvan that was her
father, and all his household, were swept into death by the men of
Lochlann, and the gold of her hair is all the dower the child brings.”
“What does she there?”
“She is devoted these days because a queer twist of a lad is devoted,
and hours she reads the prayers he is sending on tablets. It is a
game of young years and is on the love path. She grows tall and
nearing time to wed.”
“And she reads the writings?”
“She does, and who wants a cleric in a wife? Marvan taught her as a
scribe ere he went the way—cows and slaves would be a better portion.”
“I do not say that,” said Ruadan. “Ten years I worked on letters
alone in Cluain-mac-noise and books I made were gifts to kings. There
is a joy in that. If in this life I found no house, I may go back to
the pen and color pot after I have covered my circle.”
Then the voice of Bevind called from somewhere, and Doirenn stood up
and shook back her golden mane.
“She has dower in plenty,” said Ruadan.
He listened to her voice and remembered its deep music, and he rode
west with his kinsmen, who planted his fields and counted his herds.
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
A month went by, and again he stood at the gate of Fethna.
“Does that maid know me, Ruadan, from Donn or the others of my clan?”
he asked, and Fethna looked at him and laughed loud.
“The last time it was a cattle-fine for a wife you paid, and now you
are coming to ask of a maid and no name to her!”
“There is only one in the world,” said Ruadan. “She is Doirenn na
Marvan, and I would have speech with her.”
“Sorrow the day,” lamented Fethna, “it is not now you would be seeing
that one; grief of the world is on her, for Geroid who was her lover
has gone into the ‘Solitary’—far west has he gone down the Sionan to
the ancient cell of Saint Senan on the shores of Lough Dearg. She
thinks the sorrow of the world is hers.”
“I would lift that load and carry it,” said Ruadan.
“You mean to take her to wed?” and Fethna’s face had a frown on it.
It was not easy to shift the sails for every wind with Ruadan.
“It would mean war with me, or a race beyond me to the man who would
offer her less,” he said.
But for all the urging of Bevind, Doirenn would not come where he
was. She said he was the contrary in all ways to the pious youth who
had her heart. If she loved Geroid, there could be only hate in her
thoughts for one so near to the evil one as “God’s Dastard” was said
and was sung.
“She has not seen me,” said Ruadan when her refusal came. “Let her
see me and hear me, and let my own ears hear her words.”
It was not a pleasant day of joy for Fethna and the family of Fethna.
His own sons were asking the same thing, and the girl had only one
thought, and that was not of marriage.
But after much argument Doirenn put aside Bevind and walked alone
into the great hall where Ruadan—God’s Dastard and the darling of
fond women—waited.
White she was, and afraid, but the fear only made darker the blue
eyes of her. Her hair was braided in long strands over each shoulder.
Bevind had dressed her in white and the broidered shoes of skin were
white. She was more lovely than a queen of the Danaan in the ancient
legends.
But she stood, a pale, proud, frightened child in her loveliness, and
she looked past Ruadan and not at him.
“I came by the courtesy of Fethna,” she said. “I do not come by my
wish.”
Ruadan looked at her and saw the fluttering of the white throat and
the tight clenching of her hand. She looked like a bird trapped.
“And I come despite my wish to go elsewhere,” he said grimly.
“Child, I saw you once in the arbor and I shall not be forgetting the
seeing of you. I meant not to see you again, but a dream came to me
in the forest and it brought me to you, for you were in it.”
She looked at him then and looked away proudly.
“Your dream was false,” she said. “It should have been of Luaine who
claimed your cattle, or Ota the queen, whose love gift you wear.”
“By the Elements,” he began darkly, but she put out her hand.
“I have no desire for speech with unholy men,” she said. “Priest
and monk say you are that, and they have a name for it! They tell
me you speak marriage for me, but I have a choice: If Geroid goes
into sanctuary I also will go; I am going. The veiled women of
Cluain-mac-noise will take me without dower. Your dream in the forest
has no meaning to a veiled maid.”
“It will have in another time,” he said in patience, for her voice
had the sound of tears, and it made a strange ache in his heart. “I
dreamed that you were in sorrow and that I was to offer you shelter.
I did not know your sorrow but I turned and rode back to learn. From
Fethna I learned.”
“It is not your sorrow,” said Doirenn.
“It may be, and we may live to know it,” Ruadan made answer, and
strove to gentle his voice to her sadness, “for I dreamed I saw you
in a very different place—away to the west and in hills I know and by
a shore you never have seen.”
“The west!” she whispered. “Geroid is there now, a stone cell in the
mountains of the west!”
“I did not see the cell. I saw you there at a shore I know, and
Bronach the Lamentable was there—the wraith washing the shrouds of
mortals. I woke in the night with that dream, and turned in the
night to take the road here. To the people of my house Bronach does
not come for naught. You were in that dream, it means a bond with our
house, and I am here to keep that bond, and offer what I may.”
Doirenn, by the arras, called Bevind and her father.
“You told me of enchantments men make on maids when of evil mind,”
she said. “The power Ruadan learned as a monk he would turn to much
usage today. Was it by tales of dreams you witched the ring from a
queen’s hand? And witched the Lady Luaine to the forest?”
And then she laughed and went out and left them there. But when
Bevind found her in her chamber she was weeping bitterly and would
not tell them of the dream or the enchantment.
And within seven days Fethna was glad of heart to take her to
Cluain-mac-noise for the year of preparing a soul for the veil.
Between her weeping for Geroid, and the raging of his own sons there
was no peace for a quiet man in his own house.
Thus it was that the golden tresses of Doirenn were covered by the
white novice veil and she began life anew in the great school by the
Sionan, famed for its learning from Gaul even to Egypt.
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
But the year of her preparation had not ended when Ruadan again rode
to the dun of Fethna. He was hollow of eye, and his spent horses were
glad of rest and fodder.
“Is there aught of Doirenn na Marvan known to you?” he asked, and
the sons of Fethna, who had taken wives and forgotten the golden maid
who had flouted them, looked at Ruadan and laughed.
“How is a man to know of a veiled maid?” one asked. “The walls are
high and the fair ones are well guarded.”
“I was on the south shores and I heard her voice; it was her voice,
there is none other like that. It was her voice calling—a troubled
voice.”
“How could you hear a voice from the center of Erinn to the south
shore?” they said, but Fethna looked in the fierce face of Ruadan and
bade them be silent.
“Your father Ferdiad had ‘the sight,’” he said, “but my thought has
been that it did not come to you because the priests were down on
you. They can take away power if they think of it! What is it you
would do because of that calling?”
“I would answer it,” said Ruadan. “No gate of a nun’s dwelling would
open for me, but you have women about you. Take one and make a gift,
and let me ride beside you. The call was coming to me and the gift I
will provide. I will pledge them a book more fine than the one of my
youth made for the abbot’s gift to Clonard. My hand has not lost its
craft—I vow this thing!”
There was much talk of which wife would go, and the dress to wear,
and to carry, for Bevind had wed and gone north to Orielle. Also the
best horses were to bring in, and food to prepare. Hours were wasted
ere they started on the way.
They would have been as well not starting, for soon they met people
in fright and with awesome news.
While Turgesius harried the south shore and strengthened the Danish
holdings there, Queen Ota, the pagan priestess of terrible things,
had won to the heart of Erinn by the Sionan. She and her brother,
Amlaf, had a fleet on Lough Rea and Lough Boderg. A fort of theirs
was over at Rinnduin and the lands were ravaged by them. A battle at
Cluain-mac-noise had won the churches and monasteries for the queen.
Monks and nuns were killed, and there was much burning of all houses
of farmers or herders. Not a handful of thatch was left on a house
for miles, and runners had been killed with spear and with arrow.
It was too late for help. The warriors of Queen Ota were on the walls
and in the towers of Cluain-mac-noise. They held the Sionan to north
and south. It was not for nothing that the great night-sun with the
tail of fire swept like a besom over the skies of Erinn that year.
The young had fear on them, and the old went in secret ways to the
high places of ancient druidcraft and made answering fires that help
might come their way if the way of the saints failed them. Though
bishop thundered from the altar, and monk prayed in the cell, yet
fires did blaze where the temples of ancient faiths remained, but no
prayer and no spell swept away Ota and her mate—or swept away that
fiery trailing thing among the stars!
There were those who called it the war warning of the Dane,
and the worst of all the evils it announced was the sacking of
Cluain-mac-noise, because great wealth of jeweled books and costly
gifts was centered in that place.
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
“What of Doirenn who was fosterling of Fethna?” asked Ruadan of the
fleeing host.
“No one is knowing that. Ota likes not women about her except for
labor to save her men. The young and strong may be taken overseas as
slaves—no one can know that. West to the sea along the Sionan Ota
has her swift oarmen as couriers to bring quick warnings, and a fort
is there at Luimneach for all supplies, cattle and horses are held
for her, and the people of the land only live by her mercy to harvest
their own crops for her warriors. It is a sad time under the dreadful
star for the people of Erinn.”
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